Through out this whole experience, time has been moving in two ways at once. On the one hand, it feels like it was just yesterday that Kathleen and I got on the train in anticipation of the event to come and, on the other hand, it feels like we've been away from home for much longer than the 9 days that we have been.

Meeting Her for the First Time

This morning after breakfast, my "lobster bandage" (between the shape and the blood, it's apt) and a few other things will be removed and I will see my new self for the first time since the procedure was undertaken on Tuesday.

They work hard to emotionally prepare us for this moment. It's usual that there is a mix of emotions: joy, relief, happiness, but it's bound to be attenuated by some measure of shock, surprise, and, we'll be honest, there will always be a measure of disappointment. Healing from this surgery is far longer than the five days you don't see it for, and there is swelling, bruising, and other things that mean it doesn't look like it eventually will.

At this point, I am very much looking forward to it all: seeing my new self, ditching a sewn-on bandage and trussing down there that make me quite still and uncomfortable, and - this might be competing for the greatest desire - having a shower for the first time since the lengthy chlorhexadrine showers on Monday and Tuesday morning.

The Seagulls are Gathering Above

Well, no, not really, but my gosh. After five complete days without taking a shower, I'm greasy, oily, and at least I feel rather smelly.

I am obviously going to write about it here later on, but I am expecting the whole swirl of emotions once I take a look in the little tilting makeup mirror they have us bring with us.

Once that has happened and I have my shower, staff will help me with the sitz bath (which I will have to have twice-daily for next two months) and other post-op care for when I get home.

One Last Night

Kathleen and I will be heading home tomorrow.

I have to be out of my room here at L'Asclepiade by 8:30 in the morning so that patients in the hospital part who were operated on there on Friday will have a room ready for them. After that, we will collect my belongings, call a cab, and head back to the hotel room where we will collect our belongings (I still have many things there) and head to the VIA Rail station and the business lounge. I am now the owner of a donut cushion to make sure that the trip is as comfortable as possible.

Although I can't wait to get home and I think my experiences here have equipped me to manage my care, gosh does it ever feel in some way like being pushed out of the nest. I think this is the whole thing with time: I'm both itching to get home, but a little wary since it's all on me after this. No lovely staff to help and reassure me that things are normal and fine.

I'm sure it's the same for any major surgery.

Of Montréal

We will be back to Montréal for a (proper) vacation. As Canada's only city that knows it's a city*, I was fully captured this time by its charms. The feel I got while walking around here reminds me of the years in Toronto when it briefly forgot that it didn't like being Canada's most populous and celebrated itself for what it was.**

Between the mostly excellent public transit system that's well-used by a wider demographic, the shope and food, the zillion museums and galleries, and, by gosh, the absolute unending miles of actual honest-to-goodness urban area just ripe for making photos, I've got it bad. Even better: it's not an antiseptic place: it shows evidence of humanity - the good, the bad, the ambitions, the uniquieness, the soul - in ways that nearly all other cities I have been to (or live in) have ventured in one way or another to eliminate.

It's a sharpened pencil in a case of smooth nubs. We will be back.

*Most of Canada's other cities (save for perhaps Edmonton), no matter how populous, are spiritually towns-with-too-many-people. Even my in my favourite, Toronto, the discomfort and self-loathing is easily felt. **I don't get that feeling anymore and am back to loving Toronto in spite of itself, rather than because of itself.

June 21, 2026